


To bring back treasures

by a_term



Category: Soul Calibur
Genre: Adventuring, Archaeology, F/F, Mycenaean Architecture, Swinging over lava pits, Victorian era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-18 09:40:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13679109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_term/pseuds/a_term
Summary: Sometimes one finds maps to old and forgotten places where treasures may be found. Sometimes those treasures are all the more precious by not being merely riches.





	To bring back treasures

**Author's Note:**

> Finished in time for Valentine's day. It's hardly a romance, though.

                Isabella desperately wished for Egyptology to go out of style, but grave robbing evidently had a certain appeal. The other guests were milling around the mummy which was stoically ignoring the world to inspect the inside of his death mask. He had been a priest, given his attire, and, according to Isabella's magic probing, astral eyes, and experience, he was dead as a doornail. At least the drinking was decent, which meant that someone was going to over imbibe soon, and everyone would pretend not to notice.

                But at least it would be easier to handle than a mummy waking up and seeking vengeance for having their grave disturbed. Which was generally disturbing because the cloth wrappings often cracked and fell apart leaving people running away from a naked corpse while being very well aware that a major part of the embalming ritual was the removal of the urogenital organ.

                And they never were happy to finally wake up, stretch a bit, talk a little and check the time, no, they always needed their little vengeance. She had one of her old swords, in whip form, wrapped around her thigh and she felt like going outside and putting herself through her paces.

                While she daydreamed about being anywhere but here, a broad-chested man in a naval uniform sidled up to her. From all her height, she had a good view of his bald, almost shining scalp, but something in his eyes reminded her of someone she had met long ago.

                "Lady Isabella."

                "Viscount Wode?" The way the eyes were set, the shape of his head, the overflowing intensity, it did fit. He was now a captain, going by his uniform, in rank as well as in function.

                "Indeed. It's been a long time since that little adventure in Sudan, hasn't it? I got older and I guess you got wiser." He sipped from his glass of brandy with the expert grace necessary to not dip his walrus moustache in it. "And I have heard of something you might find interesting."

                Isabella let herself be led away from the mummy's latest resting spot and towards two seats away from the still heart of the party. Once both had sat down, the Viscount leaned to the side and attempted a conspiratorial murmur.

                He managed a decent stage whisper.

                "My dear aunt went to see one of her sons, Hector, the black sheep of the family, and found him neck deep in suspicious documents, ancient papers and parchments, scripts she couldn't recognise, that sort of thing."

                "A black sheep? How much of a black sheep is he?"

                "A lot, his perennially awful behaviour has left him disowned, please don't embarrass me by asking how, exactly, I'd rather not think about it. Since then he's become a guru and philosopher for his own little offshoot of theosophy, with a little sect, few people, much money. While the rest of the family tries its best to pretend he doesn't exist my aunt has a soft spot for him, perhaps understandable, she's always liked studying vermin. Although I guess his being her son has something to do with it."

                "I suppose. Now, your aunt suspects he is in possession of documents that he should not have?" Isabella leaned over the armrest, bringing her head closer to him.

                The Viscount nodded, a motion that led to his moustache tracing a second arc in emphasis, it also released the unmistakeable smell of alcohol in the air. "Quite so, she's worried the idiot might summon a demon. He prefers to translate his papers for now. Most of what he finds in there is 'give me more money,' quite predictable." Captain Wode waved around his glass as the only release for his most naval temper. "Very fashionable ideas, possibly something prophesying him as the second coming of Christ, or Buddha, or whoever else. I think you can imagine the rest. I'm fairly sure he's made them all up himself. She isn't…"

                "Carry on."

                He leaned closer, she could hear the medals ringing softly against each other on his chest. "I'm personally more interested in his accounting," he whispered, for real this time, "He must be robbing his people blind and I don't want to see that continue. I have no idea of what I'm really looking for, but I've never seen you truly in trouble in Sudan. You're good at whatever you do. It's a lot to ask for, I know, but you've perhaps seen my aunt's work before. She has a solid judgement, wouldn't you say?"

                "I'll find a way. Send me a letter with every piece of information you can think of. Paper has a better memory than us both."

                "Indeed. Now to leave before some smart arse accuses me of trying to flirt and getting shot down." He stood up, holding his glass in one hand and gently twisting one of the ends of his moustache with the other. "Good evening, Lady Valentine."

                "Good evening."

                He left, looking left and right until he found a houseboy who refilled both his brandy and his lease on life.

                Isabella didn't feel like involving herself with theosophy and even less with gurus. She considered her options and elected to hand over the meat of the business to overseas labour.

                <\--->

                Early October nights in London almost universally have a certain humid quality and this one was no exception. Everything between the ground and the clouds was a battle between water and air. Isabella estimated that air was giving a good and spirited fighting retreat. Soon a thick fog settled on the city and water started soaking its way around Isabella's raincoat, soon enough she felt droplets try to suck the warmth out of her. She studiously ignored the soggy, clammy, miserable night and focused on the fogbanks for what seemed like hours.

                Finally, strands of mist started falling from the roof above and assembled themselves in a toothy abomination against the living. She was dressed in dark browns, greys and greens and carrying a large and very fat leather satchel. The vampire quickly removed her hood, released her hair bun, bent over the banister and wrung out her hair. A thick stream of water shot out and came hammering down on the lead roof below. Isabella was suitably impressed. She opened the French door.

                "There were a lot of things to grab, a few magical protections, but nothing that could stop the determined or even detect the decently skilled. He has a, I hesitate to call it such, school in there." She frowned. "Several mistresses, pardon me, I mean tantric sex healing students. All younger and prettier than he is." A heavy grey coat, dripping with water, found itself hurled at a window handle. It gently attached itself there with barely a hint of magic. "I found his accounting in his safe, there isn't much of it. Since the esoteric papers were in the open, I can return the ledgers without a trace of their absence."

                Aimée started stripping away layers upon layers of waterlogged clothes before sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace. She turned around to expose her back to the heat and let out a sigh of relief as she leaned against the fire screen. Isabella busied herself with taking photographs of the ledgers, she shot a few glances at the half naked vampire all but laying back over the fire. Her eyes were closed and a wan smile tugged at her lips. If she had been a cat, she would have purred.

                "I'm almost done," said Isabella, "You can get ready to return these to his safe." Aimée's mouth twisted in dismay. Isabella beamed at her.

                Once Aimée had left for her second and soggy errand of the night, Isabella settled near the fire with the satchel. She sorted the documents by apparent age before looking at the texts themselves, then she got started on the recent ones as they were less likely to need their combined expertise. Besides, if it was his production, she would make better sense of it, being better informed of English happenings.

                She sighed and started sorting again, this time it was one pile of incomprehensible gibberish in unknown characters and one pile of incomprehensible gibberish in English. She was rather amused by the appearance of new characters halfway through a text. It was likely the man had found them elsewhere and decided to claim them for his own purposes. She also noted that, despite the clearly Hinduism inspired bend of the man's work, there weren't any Devanagari characters, for shame. Well, whatever worked for his sorcery, after all.

                She had nearly finished her piles, finding only a ritual for the summoning of an Ankou near the bottom, when Aimée reappeared. She quickly draped herself over the fireplace again, just in time to have the ritual diagrams shoved in her face.

                "That's almost harmless, those are just angels of death, perfectly normal psychopomps, and they don't harm people. It might be helpful if one wished to trap a soul and force someone to become a ghost. It might interest your Viscount's aunt."

                "He's not one of mine, I met him in Sudan. We were both fixing other people's mistakes. Different ones. I kept the older documents for us both."

                "Excellent," said Aimée, who snaked an arm away from the fireplace to grab a log to toss in the fire, "Let's get started."

                The older pile was clearly mostly the production of a mind similar to the guru. A few badly bound pages of yellowed paper caught Aimée's attention.

                "This one has, let me count, been written in an alphabet of twenty-four characters, no capital letters involved. They are unknown, but seem familiar somehow. No spaces at all between words. All that points to a cypher for Greek. The style of the Arabic numerals and the mathematical notations point towards the late seventeenth century."

                Isabelle sat next to her, against the fire screen. "Excellent deduction, Aimée. May we look past the first page?"

                Aimée straightened up sharply and turned red, just a little bit, especially in the ears. "Of course. I am very smart."

                "I don't doubt it."

                The next page conveniently featured a map. Yellowed, slightly decayed and with only approximate coasts. Isabella had navigated with too many of those maps to have fond memories of them, but she could still translate them into something useful.

                "Let's see, that's clearly the Azores here. They even kindly give the coordinates without trying to do it in code." Isabella hesitated for a moment. "Although the longitude is off by…" She blinked, she blinked again, mildly ashamed. "Twenty-two degrees, east."

                "There a few more islands that I don't know about. And a few more that the rest of the world doesn't either," said Aimée, "Like the Tower of the Lower World, if you've been there."

                "Sadly, yes. I don't enjoy those bubbles of existence too much. I notice they have mapped Greece particularly well."

                "What's the longitude of Athens? Mount Olympus?"

                "About twenty-two east, it fits. I guess we should be interested in that circled island there. I don't really understand why they've given the coordinates if they haven't made the map to scale. Maybe the map maker wasn't very experienced?" She took a look at the other pages, they were covered with schemas of sorcery.

                "Those must be some existence transit keys to go from and to those islands."

                "Definitely, now let's decipher that text, I hope it's only a letter substitution."

                "So do I. And I hope it really is Greek, ancient or modern, or we're going to waste a lot of time."

                "Visiting the Alexandra family every so often has advantages, I'm more than just fluent," boasted Isabella.

                "Good for you, I'm going to map character frequency. If the cypher is a letter to letter substitution, it won't matter because we don't know the characters anyway." Aimée was deadpan. Spoilsport.

                <\--->

                Isabella found the translation process rather time-consuming. It was ancient Greek, Dorian dialect, slightly warped and mangled. Aimée's very mathematical approach had helped quite a lot and she was now working on the guru's accounting. It was very creative. He had also never learned to not keep notes on his own criminal conspiracy to commit tax fraud. Aimée was doing her best to hide it, but she was so giddy that Isabella heard her giggling a few times. While his aunt might have spotted something interesting, captain Wode had struck gold.

                As for the rest of the documents, little was interesting. There were a few words on how to more efficiently murder West African demons, should one ever steal a scythe from an aspect of death, there was a description of integral calculus derived from studying golems, and there was a collection of children's songs in Tagalog.

                None of that compared to the document with the map. It was a farewell addressed to the world from a man who described himself as the last surviving member of a cult dedicated to Ares. Neither Isabella nor Aimée were very fond of that god – too boring, unintellectual and violent – or, if their suspicions were correct, of that particular cult. The document described the way to acquire and re-purpose their last and best creation, a machine they had used to destroy another creation, one that had gone rogue.

                "I'm sceptical, I crossed paths with Astaroth in Iéna, in 1806."

                "Jena? I have heard of that place. I do wonder what you were doing there."

                "Don't criticise my pronunciation. He was literally just passing by, ran into an army corps, apologized and turned around. He had really mellowed out. Believe it or not, I wasn't involved either."

                Isabella hummed her disbelief and looked at her very shady friend. She was once again decent, at least where clothing was concerned, and sitting prettily on the desk. She looked the very picture of innocence. One which was innocently skilled at spying and thievery.

                "Really, I promise. I only ever approached that entire family to tell them when they were doing stupid things. In retrospect I should have started earlier."

                Isabella decided to, if not believe her, at least pretend she did. She looked back at her work.

                The machine-girl was in a hidden tomb accessible from the crypt, or possibly graveyard, of an Atlantean fane to Ares built by refugees of the submersion on an island that was itself an emerged peak of the similarly lost archipelago of Mu. Very recursive.

                "Now that I think about it, that steel girl had some strange script written on her body," said Aimée.

                "And by the looks of it, the proper way to say her name would be Aklotti," said Isabella, "Ashlotte still sounds better." She looked at the translated magical symbols. "And those are indeed transit keys to the small realm of existence where that island is. I think we can afford a ship."

                "The crew would find it mightily suspicious, don't you think? It's inaccessible by conventional means, it's a magical place, so no one can claim it thanks to the Peace at Westphalia. Thank you, Siegfried."

                Isabella frowned. "Do not say these words. That idiot doesn't deserve them."

                 The document finally warned them that the machine wasn't perfect. She had shown signs of brooding and sapience and should be handled with care. It further recommended to copy her rather than wake her. Isabella noted with a sigh that, for an important last letter, it was rather disjointed. The man could have tried to organize his thoughts a little better.

                And then, after the graphs describing the transit point, was a note of congratulations to the reader for translating the whole text. She frowned, then frowned harder, Aimée frowned as much as she could. Never mind making a draft first, she could recommend a kick or two for that pretentious, obnoxious, wilfully obtuse little… Cur. Little cur.

                <\--->

                Archaeology was a perfectly normal occupation for ladies of good breeding – actual breeding unknown in both cases – so long as there was a man to take the credit and a sufficient number of warm bodies to handle the traps and mummies. They had a hidden temple to investigate, therefore kindly asking the Admiralty for a single measly ship was going to be easy, they would enjoy the ability to claim a little extra prestige and possibly a little extra funding for the four yearly new battleships. Captain Viscount Wode gladly offered to petition for his command to be chosen to go to a lost island not even in the same reality as its port. A few personalities had been gathered from both sides of the channel and a collection of hangers-on provided. It would be a jolly entertaining trip.

                Then tragedy struck. The Russian Fleet had finally steamed from their Baltic prison and had spotted and engaged the enemy. Sadly the enemy hadn't been a Japanese cruiser squadron but a British fishing fleet. Both Empires were now stuck in a circle of sabre-rattling and captain Wode had to return to his ship to be ready to steam at all hours and rattle his sabre when he could. Honour was, after all, a very serious thing. Both Isabella and Aimée sighed and rolled their eyes as well they could which had the expected effect of changing nothing. The nation's proud servants were unwilling to even charter a commercial ship, all had to be ready for a confrontation with Russia that wasn't going to happen. They could have paid for their own, of course, but a good cover is important and stealing a treasure, even more a person, from under the nose of a bunch of adventurers is exciting. So they decided to cross the Channel.

                The glorious French Republic had managed, by some stroke of fate, to remain entirely out of the crisis and, while they hadn't escaped the global obsession for looting Egyptian tombs, Isabella had left a button open on that day. A very red-faced and hopeful official called in a number of favours and was then replaced by an older red-faced and hopeful official who managed to assign a warship to the expedition. It was a light protected cruiser, the _Sfax_. Aimée, for some reason, wasn't enthused. Isabella diplomatically ensured people weren't looking at her.

                <\--->

                The kindly provided _Sfax_ was waiting in the French port of Brest, which still had the great roadstead that had made the French Royal Navy select it centuries ago. Aimée informed her that it was the least salubrious town in France and it indeed did look and smell the part. Despite the hilly terrain, there were somehow swamps within the city. Isabella supposed that once upon a time they might have been peaceful meadows, but they had lost all the beauty they could ever have claimed.

                However, outside of the town, the scenery was beautiful, and the light was amazing. It might be a good spot for Raphael to get another lifetime of painting out of him.

                "I've considered it for when Switzerland starts to bore him. There's already a few communities of painters around, getting drunk blind mostly. He should fit in. I still need to force someone to get more railways done. And more drainage and sewers in here, definitely more sewers."

                The cruiser itself was less impressive that the port. One might have unkindly described it as older than the temple it was to investigate. It was a transition form, an ugly and mutated thing between two graceful states. It was powered by both coal and sails, with a hull made of both wood and steel. In an age of steam and iron, it was the chrysalis modern navies had broken out of. It was also a couple decades old and was slated to be retired from service soon. Isabella could see its age, despite the crew's obsessive cleaning the masts bore permanent stains of coal smoke.

                The rest of the expedition arrived piecemeal in early November. Aimée had commandeered an officer's room for the two of them with practiced ease and the excuse that nobody wants to sleep to close to mages. The notorious adventurer Carrington came early with a handful of hangers-on, including a rather more unctuous and stupid one than usual, De Hauteville or something similar Isabella didn't particularly care to remember, who was apparently his chief assistant. The captain wisely set them to do their own thing in an emptied magazine. Professor Latour with his fellow academics then came and pilled themselves with some enlisted sailors further back with the evicted officer and they were finally joined by a German specialist in Archaic Greek architecture, Gertner.

                Apparently the sailors were rather fond of the latter group since the fat German had mastered the art of cooking with fireballs. Aimée decided to uphold her high position in the navy's esteem by enchanting part of the larder to stay below freezing. The ship was loaded with supplies and then set sail. Literally. They at least used the engines for manoeuvring.

                <\--->

                Isabella was too old and experienced at sailing to let herself be taken in by the beauty of the changing horizons – they didn't actually change, for a start – or by the smell of the sea – she knew how to find a coast and inhale, thank you very much – or by the sense of adventure – try getting out of a storm on a sail-powered hog of a ship not even a third of the size of this one, and it had been nothing but decent weather anyway.

                The sorcery did excite her, though. It was a rare feat to transit a ship this large through a gap in reality and she was almost certain it was a first. It was also rather exhausting.

                She was breathing hard from the strain, sweat beaded on her forehead and a few points of light blinked behind her closed eyelids. Once she had caught her breath, she opened her eyes. The sky on the other side made no sense, streams of bright stars flew low in all directions, a thousand faceted sun, hanging too low and too large, illuminated the sea with a thousand colours, and an aurora borealis had lost itself and covered the sky, smothering the light of any star that might have been recognisable. The sea was calm, the waves' power kept in check by gigantic patches of seaweed that strangled their efforts. One sailor climbed the rigging and kissed one of the sails, with them there were going to be fewer excursions in the water to cut loose giant strands of green clinging to the propellers. Gigantic ice walls on the too far horizon enclosed the nautical realm of existence and in the too thin air they stood solid, with their grey and green stripes and inconstant points of light, reflected from above. A buoy was dropped into the sea to mark the transit point, but all knew the chain would be too short by a few miles at least. The ocean hungrily devoured it all the same. The smell of salt and iodine was almost overpowering, the celestial lights provided no warmth and the seawater itself seemed to cling to all it could reach, hungry for human life and heat, giving nothing in return. Even De Hauteville managed to be stunned in quiet awe and apprehension and shut up.

                And there was an island to be seen, in the centre of this hole in the ice. A quick spell found it to be a few dozen nautical miles away, too far to be visible on earthly seas. But this one wasn't. The green sea clung to the ship and slowed it so much that it took a full twenty hours to get close enough to what was Mu's last trace to even describe it. The sun, or whatever was up there, hadn't moved, but the stained glass of its surface had bubbled and changed, bringing new colours into being. An eruption of a particularly deep red had disconcerted a number of the crew and cast an unpleasant light on the sea and its ice walls.

                The island was a large ridge, a set of peaks piercing the waters rising a few kilometres in the fantastic sky and the few ragged clouds above, thick ice and snow hid everything but a green and orange belt around the coast. A few foothills managed to soften the descent into the sea on the coast facing the ship. Aimée used a few spells to measure what she could see and found the island to be fifty kilometres long, with its peaks reaching ten kilometres. A daymark was present where the letter said it would be, a giant bronze mirror that had lost its shine centuries ago. Swarm of unidentified creatures moved lazily around the island, in great shimmering streams or in larger, slower and less inspiring red, green and brown clumps. It took the expedition some time to realise that it was the local marine life that had taken to the surface and skies.

                Aimée took it upon herself to cast a ward against drowning on the entire crew, then on the ship itself so it wouldn't float far above the island and so that its engines could still fire. Closer to the daymark they encountered a flying kraken. Isabella caught it with a bolt of lightning and the cook tried his hand at making many variations on the theme of squid. That dinner was very welcome and changed the mood from awe and gnawing apprehension to well-fed excitement, just in time for a bay to be found near the daymark. It was between a promontory covered in a forest of seaweed and a larger advance of grey rock and coral. In the foothills above it rested a giant sphere of porous rock.

                The smell of seaweed grew stronger inside the bay. A strange group of barnacled rocks was identified as a dock of sorts by a keen-eyed lookout. The ship's propellers were cleared and it manoeuvred to moor itself alongside the dock.

                Then a jellyfish slammed into a sail.

                "J'espère que nous ne subirons pas le même sort que la méduse." Aimée did her best to remain deadpan. There was the smallest crack in her voice. The captain groaned and looked away. Isabella did not even grace her with a reaction.

                Her first step off the ship led to a distressing feeling of something chewy and slimy being reduced to paste through the sole of her boot. Poor sea slug. She discreetly scraped it off on some convenient barnacles. Doctor Gertner pointed out a few buildings in positively awful repair on the shore. He noted that a few were in far better shape and therefore he hypothesised they were only abandoned relatively recently. Aimée was already leading Carrington up the damaged paved road that left the harbour while his meat shields almost dared to fend off the onslaught of the sea lice. Carrington focused his stiff upper lip and masculine pride in ignoring it while Aimée let the arthropods immolate themselves on her wards and forged on.

                The road led to the giant rock sphere, up in the foothills.  It was a few hundred meters across. As Isabella lengthened her stride to join Aimée's group, she got a better look and realised that it was a giant, dead coral growth. Its summit was capped with a fine dusting of snow, the lower slopes were covered in the rather sparse dark green seaweeds and orange corals which formed the belt of colour around the island. As their path led further up and around the ancient coral, even the sorceresses were starting to suffer from the effects of the thin air.

                At the end of the road sat the source of the coral. It had burst out and away from a cyclopean retaining wall that encircled the summit of a hill. Nearby, a simple gate maybe three meters wide and as many tall, complete with relieving triangle, offered a way into what turned out to be the temple complex the sect had used.

                The inside of the walled area was devoid of marine life, the coral above cast its shade across it but failed to engulf it and had strained in its attempt to do so, a curved indent in its shape betrayed the power of the warding pushing it away. Almost all within the walls was in ruins except for the temple, a low, squat building to its side and a set of low and flat constructions that seemed to be commons. The temple sat on the summit itself and was in the classical Doric style with decorations to match, however the roof was built entirely in marble, probably owing to the island's dearth in timber. The sizeable ruins of the commons had little to show for themselves. There were extensions of various styles grafted onto a better preserved cyclopean core. Some of that core was, in turn, far better preserved that the rest thanks to the cult's maintenance, the roofs were, again, stone and something caught Gertner's attention. There were the skeletal remains of an arm lying on a roof.

                That would catch someone's attention.

                Obviously, Astaroth had come to visit his parents. Inside, the place had been completely savaged and, while someone had removed the bodies, there were bone fragments lying about. Those weren't the only traces of fighting. The walls and floors were marked with impacts that matched his great hammers. Smashed and rusted machinery sat at odd angles with the walls. Furniture had been smashed into firewood and then into mould. It was all rather cheerful. Gertner happily ignored the ambiance and picked up a stylus. He made remarks about both the material and the decorations, both were highly unusual. Carrington eyed a ceiling that had been partially smashed outwards. De Hauteville was being even more useless than the other rich and noble scions. Latour and friends pocked at the forge.

                Aimée had disappeared. Isabella suspected she was having second thoughts about the possibility of there still being useable weapons in storage somewhere. Well, she was a sufficiently good alchemist to conjure newts' tails and vitriol on demand. She wouldn't need help sabotaging anything. She might need a little time however. Isabella drummed on her thigh with her gauntleted hand and let a glove fall from her pocket and scientific discovery stopped for a few minutes. Then she decided to put the glove on, she wasn't very sensitive to cold, but the air was rather chilly.

                The expedition took some time inspecting the forge and the foundry next door. There was a large selection of destroyed pre-industrial equipment and Latour ran a little screening operation while his friends picked up some interesting fragments and ingots of unknown alloys. Carrington looked on, disgusted. His assistants hadn't been smart enough to get in the spirit of things and he had to be open about doing it, much like Gertner did. When Aimée decided to reappear, Isabella noted that she had judiciously picked her adventuring outfit with plenty of pockets and that a few of them were fuller than before. Smart woman. Woman. She had gotten used to it.

                Once the researchers were finished taking their first look at the commons, they approached the temple. For a sanctuary dedicated to a god of war, it was depressingly boring. The Altlantean exiles had forgotten all the good aspects of a proper hidden temple. There were no traps, no fountains of magma, and no boulders rolling down the steps. It was just a common and useable temple. Isabella thought that perhaps if the Atlanteans had kept worshiping Poseidon, they might have built something more entertaining. All she had to deal with was an admittedly worth looking at statue of Ares as a gigantic and well-armed hoplite. Its surface was green with corrosion, however, unless it was the normal aspect of the metal. And, being naked outside of helmet and sandals, he displayed a significant musculature. And masculinity. That was quite uncommon. Well, he had always thought more with that head anyway. It might cause an uproar if it was ever to be brought back. She looked over to Aimée.

                "It looks a little too heavy to be ferried back, doesn't it?" she whispered.

                "A shame, it'd look great in your hall. And make people uncomfortable, or at least blush. Which I suspect is why you're interested," Aimée whispered back.

                "They are all so stuffy and obsessed with virtue. Even proper kissing is too much for them. And then they have ten mistresses and twenty more actresses on retainer. And often enough, the maids."

                "Tell me about it. I've had a president die in the salon bleu de l'Elysée with his trousers around his ankles in company of one of his lovers."

                "I was told that there might have been a little bit of exaggeration."

                "Of course they'd say that, they don't want to shock you. And the family is understandably upset, but it is as much a poetic truth as well as a real one." She finished with a smirk that seemed to grow too large. Her mouth snapped back in her habitual cold expression and she raised her hands to massage her cheeks a little.

                "Did you hurt yourself by smiling? That entire affair must have been hell for you."

                "Hush."

                Isabella checked that no one was looking and pinched Aimée right above the hip. She started in a very satisfying way and pouted.

                "Let's go take a look at the squat building, I think it's the crypt," whispered Aimée.

                The squat building was closer in design to an Egyptian mastaba. It was flat roofed and a slope led down to a door without any arch or relieving triangle. The vertical stone were walls made of regular blocks with rough outside surfaces and there was an atypical outer perimeter of free standing columns, but those were the only major differences from the usual plan.

                Inside, it was even cooler than outside. A few openings in the ceiling allowed light to enter the room. It wasn't quite the same shape as the outside which was a shame because the presence of a secret passage was going to be obvious to the following team. There were a number of sarcophagi, mostly smashed apart and a few piles of skeletal remains.

                "Cheerful," commented Isabella.

                "It is a crypt. And Astaroth has been through here, we should be grateful the roof is still standing," replied Aimée.

                "I'm more interested by the fact that this isn't a Mycenaean type tomb. The style doesn't fit with the other buildings. You rebuild and renovate temples, not tombs. We might call it a mastaba because it does look like one, but we should keep in mind the tomb in question could just be elsewhere."

                "There are plenty enough bodies here to make it a tomb."

                "Don't raise them. It feels more like someone was cleaning up after Astaroth, no one was buried here with dignity, look around, whoever it was just pilled the corpses in here to make the commons habitable again. This might have been anything. There's possibly a more fitting tomb elsewhere. If we stay here we are just going to waste our time. Let's leave the others to handle this one."

                Aimée looked blankly ahead at a point on the wall for a few seconds. "That makes sense. I'm going to trust your judgement." She nodded to herself and mumbled something.

                "Pardon me?"

                "I was thinking that the real tombs are probably outside the walls, like most in Mycenae. In addition, those walls are, well, retaining walls, we're feeling they are defensive because this is an alien place to us, but to whoever lived here they were just to prevent the terrain from sliding around."

                Isabella nodded in turn. "Let's have a little stroll along the walls."

                <\--->

                Gertner, Latour, Carrington and friends were taking their time with the mastaba while Aimée and Isabella were discovering that the retaining wall was quite a bit longer than it appeared at first glance. And that while on the inside the terrain had been levelled, it wasn't the case on the outside. After an hour, they had completed their search of the area around the walls and recorded a number of tomb sites worth looking into.

                They had also batted away more curious fish than they cared to count.

                They headed for the more promising site. Several trenches heading into a hillside and a single heavy stone door at the end of each. Moving the doors was too much effort for either women to accept having to do so – and genuinely too heavy for them, but they didn't want to admit that – and the relieving triangles above the doors were of the solid kind. Gaining access to the inside of the tholoi was going to be a bit trickier than just heroically being in the vicinity. Aimée tried the mist approach and discovered that generations of barnacles, silt and whatever scum roamed around had managed to seal the doors quite well. Except for one, still too tight to pass through, but it had moved more recently.

                "Well, on the geological scale at least," finished Aimée as she brushed dust that she had imagined off her clothes.

                So they searched further up the tumulus, looking for possible vents as the top of the chambers' arches. Isabella started kicking off giant barnacles holding down a strangely placed flat rock and Aimée was busy tearing away some particularly resilient seaweed over another when Isabella heard her suggest a possibly faster course of action.

                "Maybe we could just melt the damn doors down. We're powerful enough, aren't we?"

                "That wouldn't be very subtle."

                "Neither is hypnotising everyone and telling them the object they were having a row over never existed. And it was our original contingency plan."

                "It would leave physical traces."

                "Looters might always have come before us. And we'll need to open the door anyway, those vents will be too small."

                Isabella tried to think of a properly non comital answer and gave herself some time by trying to shift her rock over to the side. It revealed a shaft down, about the span of a hand wide.

                "Oh dear. This might just be it."

                Aimée came over and looked in the hole. "Well, that was enlightening. It's not quite straight, I can't see all the way down." She stood up and made a pose before turning into mist and rushing down the hole.

                Isabella sat down on the rock and waited. She heard a muffled curse and saw some light stream out of the vent. There was a solid thumping sound and then something croaked. Aimée blasted out of the vent and regained her human shape.

                "Wrong tomb. That one was a mummy of sorts." Aimée's mouth twisted in disgust. "Terrible taste."

                After some basic geometry, they found a flat rock in the alignment of the most recently moved door and decided to take a look below. This time Aimée did not try to make a pose. Isabella knelt down near the vent.

                "Oh," said Aimée, about twenty metres below, "Good morning."

                Isabella's heart clenched in her chest. Hard. It hurt a bit. She knelt and brought her hear against the vent. Despite the echo of the tomb, she could barely hear Aimée. If she wasn't talking to an empty grave, she was talking to someone too quiet for Isabella to hear. If she was talking to an empty grave, Isabella would be rather cross. It is impolite to play with people that way.

                "I'm just visiting, I found a map to here with a friend of mine, we figured we should come and take a look."

                Well, that was enlightening, and while there wasn't a cry for help yet. Her hand went to grab the handle of her sword.

                "Don't you ever get tired in there? I've spent a little time in coffins and it's amazing how fast I wanted a change of scenery, or at least room to stretch. I mean, yes, of course you have the room, but…"

                But?

                "Oh I guess I should have thought of that."

                Isabella considered being out of the loop when events were happening as one of the worst things in the world. It was possible that she was right.

                "But how does it reseal then? I tried going through a while ago and the door was airproof."

                There was a lengthy pause. Isabella debated the pros and cons of shouting in the vent.

                "I had no idea that they knew of vulcanized rubber, I should have thought about that. Speaking of rubber, let me see if I can fix your lungs. Or maybe lung, I don't know how many you have."

                All these details weren't helping. Much. It was probably…

                "Oh, yes, yes, of course," said Aimée, she raised her voice, "Isabella, I've found her, she's in here!"

                Finally. Isabella cleared her throat. "Finally." She couldn't scrape all her worry out of her voice. She took a deep breath, her temper was split between being angry and being relieved, neither would do. "So, will we have to melt that door down?"

                "She says she can open it. She's quite bored here, on this island."

                Isabella leapt over to the top of the trench and let herself drop in. Before long she could faintly hear heavy footsteps on the other side of the door which started to swing away from her on its central axis. On reflection that wasn't the typical mounting. On further reflexion, there was no one behind it. Wrong side. She quickly stepped over to the other side of the trench and saw Aimée and Ashlotte.

                "And this is Isabella, or Ivy, I think you've met her before. We'll take care of you and repair you."

                It suddenly struck Isabella that Ashlotte was smaller and slighter than in her memories, where she was a fearsome fighter. She probably still was one, despite the lack of practice. And the lack of repairs. She was covered in rust and pieces of her outfit, or armour, were missing. Most of the cloth has suffered dearly at the hands of time and only wispy patches remained. According to what she had heard, her lungs were mostly inoperative. However she had just opened that door, about five cubic metres of stone, and she carried a sarcophagus over her shoulder along with that giant sculpted steel cudgel in her other hand.

                "Hello," said Isabella, "May I ask, whose is that?"

                Ashlotte opened her mouth and formed words, but the wind blew them away. Aimée leaned towards her head and Ashlotte repeated.

                "It's hers. Let's take her back to the boat and get some basic repairs done. Since she's active and independent, there's no need to hide her."

                Isabella stepped forwards and knelt down next to Ashlotte. There were still details to iron out. "What is your current mission? Or are you completely without one?"

                Ashlotte's rasp was still barely audible. "I completed mine, they told me to lay still in there, but I got curious, I left the grave and went on walks." There was almost a change in tone. "Aimée said I can leave this place with you, I would like to take this along." A single motion of her shoulder indicated the steel sarcophagus.

                "It's filled with beautiful brass and bronze roses, left to her by the last of the cult, after she came back with Astaroth's corpse," said Aimée. She hesitated for a moment. "You should probably know that he got better, like all of us who spent too much time around those two swords seem to do."

                "He is dead. This leaves minimal room for improvement."

                "He… recovered. It's an effect of the swords, I believe. It worked similarly for several others." Aimée looked contrite. Or possibly embarrassed. Ashlotte seemed to have no valid response to this, so she didn't respond and simply looked blankly at Aimée.

                Isabella cut in. "He's also become a more peaceful person. I have not heard of him causing damage in centuries."

                "That remains upsetting. I remember you being described as a former ally and current enemy of his. Do you swear by this assessment?"

                "In this instant, I do."

                "Then I shall have to consider it accurate. Besides my mission was noted as finished." Ashlotte stayed immobile for so long that Isabella feared that was the end of her. Aimée started rifling through her pockets for tools. She produced a large screwdriver and two thin metal flasks with a flourish.

                "Let's patch up her lungs now at least, it'll make communication so much easier. A little silicon-oxygen caulking should make them airtight enough for proper speech! Those are one of Isabella's inventions. Not the caulk itself, but the binary components to mix anywhere." She smiled. A little forced.

                The response took some time to come. Isabella felt a drop of cold sweat trace down the nape of her neck. Aimée's smile cracked a little, betraying her frayed nerves. Ashlotte stared at where Aimée had been. The silence stretched out even more. Isabella swallowed. She exchanged a glance with Aimée.

                "I have no idea what any of those are, but please proceed," rasped Ashlotte.

                Aimée immediately started a closer examination of the neck and chest plates. Isabella joined her in disassembling Ashlotte's front. Soon, they were patching ancient leather bags with cutting edge alchemy. Aimée's screwdriver had seen use as a lever and met its match, it was now slightly bent. Isabella noted that the gears turning in the window in her chest were not connected to the rest of her. Purely symbolic, but symbols are important in magic. There were a few amulets embedded in the chassis beneath, in particular, there was one granting free movement under water, probably useful in this confused and confusing place. Aimée oiled the thin, blunt steel blades that served as vocal chords and then the armoured plates went back on, lightning danced on their fingers, welding armour back onto Ashlotte's chassis, who hadn't moved a hair. Hers were literal strands of beautiful white silk, slightly yellowed with age.

                Once again complete, she raised her head towards the sky and sang a few notes. Not quite an angelic choir, but more than passable. "Thank you." Her voice was now both comprehensible and audible, an auspicious start to her repairs.

                "You mentioned walking around this place," said Isabella, "Do you know anything about the flat building near the temple? I am quite certain there is at least secret passage in there and this island has been lacking in bad surprises. I am sure there must be some."

                "I have no personal records of anything there."

                "Oh," commented Aimée, constructively.

                "However, my fathers informed me that one of the buildings covers a path to a buried Aztec or proximal complex. Dangerous enough for the Atlanteans to have hidden the path under a building."

                "Ah," added Isabella to the debate.

                "They said that there were platforms over pools of magically molten rock and armed shadows guarding a treasure of rubies on a sacrificial altar to a god hungry for human blood."

                Aimée and Isabella exchanged a glance. Both women smirked. Entertainment was served.

                <\--->

                Professor Latour was starting to think that Gertner's attempt to make the mastaba spit out its secrets was a bad idea. The back wall had indeed concealed a secret stairway and the stairway did indeed lead to something interesting.

                A pre-Columbian Mesoamerican temple was indeed an interesting find, especially when half filled with magma. Somehow the heat was not radiating from the pool or heating the air which was most fortunate as Carrington's following of rich and noble scions was already having enough trouble keeping the shadowmen in respect. Two lines had formed, the glory hounds on the platform connected to the stairs, pointing their rifles thankfully complete with bayonets at the shadowmen across the gap. These fellows were happily dancing and juggling with their obsidian bladed clubs. Being shot had only amused them until Gertner had lobbed a fireball at them. Only then had they scattered and screamed, then one of the shades had vomited back a stream of green that had hit the fat German in the chest. Now Latour and his colleagues were busy keeping him alive. Offensive magic was therefore not a viable avenue of attack. One of the shadows had jumped over to them, but that brave idiot De Hauteville had skewered it with his bayonet and pushed it in to the magma. That had been effective enough.

                He had to place a lot of hopes in the other young idiot who they had sent running to the ship for help. Or for the sorceresses to come back. They'd need them to solve this sooner rather than later since Gertner's solution to unearth the secret had been to have bravado filled idiots knock the wall down.

                Three sets of footsteps rang down the stairway, one significantly heavier than the others. Two eager witches ran in the room, sword in hand. A rusted doll holding a sarcophagus lid as a shield, and a giant, elongated lump of steel as a weapon followed.

                <\--->

                Isabella cast the tip of her whip sword around an ornamental stone bridge spanning the room, threw an arm around Aimée's waist, and stepped off over the magma. She felt the warm air play with her hair and Aimée's body tense in her grip. The shadows prepared for them, moving where they were expected to land. She let out a shaky breath, not out of fear, but out of excitement and happiness.

                Aimée sprung from her grasp and stabbed a shadow in the forehead before she was even done landing. Isabella grabbed an obsidian sword mid-arc in her gauntlet, then slashed the shade in half with her re-aggregated sword. Aimée split the kneecap of a cheeky shadow in half, giving it the precious life lesson of being careful with kicking in a swordfight, she ended it by stabbing it where the heart should be. Isabella stepped forward and embedded the obsidian sword she had grabbed in the head of another shadow, another stepped up, green foam spilling out of his mouth, it released its poison on its neighbour as Isabella made its head fly. A sonorous clang informed her that Ashlotte had joined the fray by landing on another shade. Aimée gently rapped her blade against the knuckles of a shadow attacking her, it dropped its blade, she dropped its head. Ashlotte bashed a shade into the magma with her sarcophagus lid and embedded the last shadow in the far wall with a swing worthy of a golf champion. Isabella let out her first breath of the fight. She hadn't held it in, it had just been fast. That had been nice. Relaxing, almost. And it was over.

                All three women, each in a specific state of life, unlife or otherwise, stretched and took stock of the situation. The shadowmen's enchantment was dissipating and they returned to their nominal state of being mummified corpse. Isabella noted that their blood was greenish, amazing, all those irrelevant details one ignores in a fight. She thought that a few of those macahuitl – what was even the plural for those? – would make some fine souvenirs. And objects of study.

                "Macahuitls. It's one of those cases were English doesn't care."

                "Thank you, Aimée."

                Aimée jumped to the altar's platform and started looking around. Another shadow sprung out of the ground, this one wearing priest's ornaments. She poked a few quick holes in it and it fell to the ground, another desiccated mummy somehow leaking green fluid. Isabella joined her and took a look at the statue behind the altar. She was unable to make sense of it. Not because she was ignorant of Maya and Aztec myth, or those of Mu, although she had to admit that she didn't have much to be proud of in those areas, but simply because it was cracked and leaking deep red blood.

                "Carrington. Opinion?"

                "Lady Valentine, I can't see much from here. I'm sure you understand…" He motioned at the pool of magma. "It is a bit complicated."

                "Young men, build him a bridge. Latour, how is he?" The response lagged. A flip of her sword made a small thunderclap. "Latour!"

                "Oh! Alive, he'll manage with the right medical attention. Which I am sure you can provide."

                A few quick jumps later, Isabella inspected the pallid German. After digging in her pockets she pulled out a number of metal flasks. Gertner drank without asking questions and regained his ruddy complexion. Behind her, Ashlotte landed, let down her improvised shield and grabbed Carrington. He was amazingly calm for his trip to the statue.

                "Herr Professor Doktor Gertner." She paused and mentally checked that she had put the titles in the right order, Germans could get very particular about that. Once she was satisfied that she had, she resumed. "You are out of danger, however you will need time to recover. About a month. Latour and friends will return you to the ship while we finish looking around."

                She returned to the platform bearing the altar. She was getting mildly self-conscious that her swinging from the ceiling earlier what entirely self-indulgent. Aimée looked at her with an angelic look on her face, indicating she had swiped the rubies away while everyone was busy. Indeed a few pockets looked fuller and that satchel over her back looked more rotund than ever.

                "It's from Mu, a forgotten beast or some sort of demon fed through blood sacrifice. Probably some corrupted Teotl bound in the stone and slowly bleeding to death. Very classical, it would be the sixth I see. It's so weak it might already be dead. Let's just leave it here." He stood up and wiped the blood off his hands and on his trousers. "One day I am going to remember that towels are an important adventuring tool. Let's just wall up the place again."

                "I do not understand why my fathers did not have me clean up," said Ashlotte, "It was easy."

                "Probably for the same reason they didn't have Astaroth clean up," replied Aimée, "They must have essentially ignored it as a threat. Besides, they had no incentive to go and attack it given their financial resources."

                "And they had no estimate of the strength of the denizens," completed Isabella. "It was far easier to let it lie and slowly rot away."

                "That is acceptable," said Ashlotte.

                "Pardon me?" said Carrington, "It sounded like Greek, but I can't quite understand it."

                "Wait. What were we speaking, Aimée?" asked Isabella.

                "Greek, sixteenth century. I think," said Aimée, still in the aforementioned language, "Ashlotte needs to be brought to speed on modern languages."

                "She understood him just fine. But yes, we'll need to teach her to speak something from the twentieth century."

                "That would be helpful," agreed Ashlotte.

                Carrington made another trip across the magma pool under Ashlotte's arm and the group met his hangers-on halfway on the stairs accompanied by sailors carrying weapons and timber. After a short explanation all that manpower was put to good use rebuilding the wall at the end of the mastaba, De Hauteville's management was a resounding success in that he realised that the sailors did just fine on their own and didn't need orders not oversight. He was growing up. Good for him and Carrington. The group stepped out of the mastaba and headed for the ship, they caught up with the Frenchmen hauling Gertner. Latour lagged a few paced behind, his hands firmly in his pockets.

                "Tell me, Carrington, why do you have De Hauteville as your protégé? Rather than another noble and wealthy scion, of course." asked Isabella.

                Carrington bit his lip and looked at Aimée. "Well… He seems capable enough, with a little guidance."

                "But less than some of your other charges."

                "There is something to be said for excessive bravery, it is easier to cure than cowardice, experience does it naturally." He had regained his proud composure.

                "I can explain it faster, if you want me to," said Aimée. There was a sparkle in her eye and a rather impish set to her lips.

                "I will handle myself just fine, thank you," said Carrington, quickly, "I am good friends with his mother. She financed a few of my early expeditions and has asked of me to both ensure his safety and develop his skills."

                Latour snorted. Aimée smiled. Ashlotte leaned her head to the side. She had recovered her sarcophagus and it was perhaps just due to the awkwardness of carrying such a large load on one shoulder. Carrington looked the very picture of serenity.

                "I see," concluded Isabella.

                <\--->

                Isabella had climbed in the _Sfax_ 's rigging and took in the view of the green-chocked sea under its alien sky. It all seemed a lot warmer now, despite the same ice walls and snow cover. After a few days, the tension had melted away. The last of the island's inhabitants was carrying on board carefully selected artefacts of an ancient civilisation and, under the malign influence of Aimée, was claiming all the magical elements as hers. No one argued with the quarter tonne war machine since those objects arguably all were, legally, hers. And she was rather rusty. Tetanus was no laughing matter.

                The secret passage had been walled back up, the mastaba was now a properly ordered ossuary and the tombs had been cleared of undead. Aimée still complained about the taste.

                All was well, therefore trouble was bound to come. She'd like a second kraken, the cook had done some excellent work with the first.

                "Look over there, that octopus is covered in glowing blue rings," said an overly confident young voice. De Hauteville.

                Isabella felt her sweat run cold, a few French sailors shouted something and Aimée had frozen in place. Isabella let herself drop down to the deck and picked herself up just fast enough to jump over the side of the ship and see the idiot grab the pretty and deadly little thing. He slowly toppled over while the octopus swam away, assisted by a kick from Aimée.

                Both women knelt next to him.

                "It just paralyzes if memory serves. We just need to make him breathe until his body recovers from the venom. And perhaps keep his heart running."

                "Unless it's stranger than that. Remember, it was glowing." Isabella traced a few symbols in the air and breathed on them. A quick air golem would handle his breathing just fine. Hopefully. At least his heart was still beating. "Now, Miss Life-drinker, tell me about his health."

                "I don't know, he doesn't look like he's dying anymore, though. And don't call me that." Aimée prodded the supine young man with her boot. "I'm going to go get Carrington. Don't move, should you even be able to do so."

                A sailor appeared, rifle in hand next to the little commotion and took aim at the octopus, now seeking a hiding place in the rocks beneath the dock. A gunshot rang out and ran true.

                "Et un problème de moins," said the man.

                Isabella considered all things. All things considered, it was going to be time to leave. In addition, she was quite tired of casting the drowning wards on everyone over and over.

                <\--->

                The trip back brought a new problem. There was a third woman in the room. At least her luggage and final resting place, had been placed in the cargo hold, on account of weighing a full tonne. There had been a problem on the way in as well, Isabella was too tall for the bed. When she curled up to fit in it, her knees would hang over the side, so she took the bed roll, on the floor, and woke up with cramps. Aimée managed just fine in the bed and slept like a log. But now there was Ashlotte as well. Ashlotte was short and slight, her metal bustle wasn't. Ashlotte didn't sleep, but her mass forced her to sit on the floor to spend the night. She was unwilling to risk falling overboard at sea. She had once fallen off a ship and finding her way back to the surface had been a thoroughly awful ordeal, filled with silt and salt. So now, Isabella had to sleep on the floor against a metal girl.

                And Aimée kept a small ball of light hovering over her warm, soft, comfy bed. There was the sound of scribbling.

                "Aimée," pleaded Isabella.

                "My dear?"

                "You are supposed to be sleeping."

                "I am sketching spring styles. And I think she should be taller. Don't you?"

                Ashlotte nodded in approval in the half-darkness and knelt next to the bed to start chatting dresses, repairs and modular body parts with the creature of the night. Isabella curled up tighter on the too thin mockery of a mattress, covered her head, and tried to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> The French president dying in a boudoir with his trousers around his ankles is real, by the way. He's Felix Faure.


End file.
